Why Bihar hospitals are in such a sorry state
As the total number of COVID positive cases in India inched towards the 12 lakh mark (11,92,915 to be exact), reports are pouring in from states like Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu about a huge surge in COVID cases. On Tuesday, 38,444 new cases were reported across India. So far 7.5 lakh patients have been discharged after they recovered, while 4.1 lakh active cases are still there.
Maharashtra leads with 3,27,031 cases, followed by Tamil Nadu with 1,80,643 cases. Delhi comes third with 1,25,096 cases.
The most worrying aspect is that the COVID virus is spreading fast in rural areas of Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
The number of COVID cases has reached 28,504 in Bihar alone. On Tuesday, 1109 new cases were reported and so far 198 people have died. Patna is the worst affected where the number of COVID patients is nearly 4,000. The virus is spreading fast in Muzaffarpur, where 177 new cases were recorded on Tuesday. Bhojpur, Lakhisarai, Saran, Bhagalpur and Nalanda are the other affected districts.
The three big government hospitals in Bihar are unable to deal with the influx of COVID patients. On Monday, we had shown in our primetime show ‘Aaj Ki Baat’, visuals of bodies lying in Patna Medical College Hospital for two days. The bodies were hurriedly removed after the video was telecast on India TV.
On Tuesday, another video emerged of a dead body lying inside an isolation ward of Nalanda Medical College and Hospital, for two days. There were no nurses and doctors inside the ward, and close relatives were looking after their patients.
This is in complete contravention of the COVID treatment protocol. Only persons wearing PPEs are allowed to enter COVID isolation wards. The relatives of patients requested doctors and nurses to get the body removed as it was nauseating but to no avail. It was only when the patients refused to take their meals that the hospital administration woke up and quietly removed the body that had been lying there since Sunday.
An ex-serviceman under treatment at the NMCH sent us a video showing how doctors and nurses rarely visit their wards. In one of the wards, when nurses refused to help a patient experience difficulty in breathing, another patient Shankar Kumar lying on another bed, came over and gave CPR to the critical patient.
The health care system in Bihar appears to be collapsing. In NMCH hospital, India TV reporter Nitish Chandra met a man whose father was critical. He had brought an oxygen cylinder from the market with him. He said he had no trust in the hospital’s facilities.
When India TV reporter spoke about the sorry state of affairs in hospitals to Bihar Health Minister Mangal Pandey, the minister said, all these complaints were baseless. His reply was: if the facilities were inadequate, how did more than 300 patients recover and return home.
I feel sad when I see videos of stray dogs moving inside hospital premises, bodies lying unattended near patients for two days and nurses and doctors refusing to treat the patients. Relatives staying near COVID patients inside wards offer a sorry sight. According to the protocol, hospitals do not hand over bodies to relatives because of fear of infection. Then, the basic question arises: how can a hospital allow relatives to sit near COVID patients inside isolation wards? Neither the doctors, nor the hospital administration takes notice of such a situation, and this is really worrisome.
The most comical aspect is about Bihar Health Minister Mangal Pandey. He is unwilling to admit that the visuals shown in videos are real, nor is he willing to accept the reporter’s word, who had crosschecked the visuals in the video by visiting the wards. He was only parroting a single sentence, that if the situation was so bad, how did 300 patients recover and go home.
One should ask the minister whether the thousands of asymptomatic people who recovered at home without taking medicines, did so because of the “success” of his healthcare system. When ministers close their eyes from realities, the situation degenerates and this is what is happening in Bihar hospitals. Mangal Pandey should ponder: why relatives of patients are sending videos of unattended bodies, why are there no doctors and nurses, and why are the patients being looked after by relatives.
The reason is simple: the people of Bihar have no faith, no trust in the state healthcare system. How can they have trust when they have such a health minister? A son brings an oxygen cylinder to the hospital for his critical father only because he has no faith in the health system. Common people’s faith in governmental healthcare has been more or less eroded. It’s time that ministers like Mangal Pandey try to provide relief to patients instead of burying their faces in the sand like an ostrich.
The ground reality is that doctors in Bihar do not have masks, gloves and PPE kits, which are basic necessities to combat COVID. Bihar government asks people to get themselves tested, and what is the ground reality?
There are long queues of people lined up for testing, but no doctors are available to carry out the tests. I think, reports about the sorry state of affairs in Bihar hospitals have already reached the Centre, which promptly sent a central team to keep watch and provide help. The NMCH hospital medical superintendent was changed soon after the central team’s visit.
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